The Stone Carving Studio 2024 blog/news
We have had another great year of carving and socialising at The Stone Carving Studio. The energy and the quality of the work has been really high over the last couple of terms, with some really good sculptures coming out. It has just been announced that one of my students, Mike, has been awarded the sculpture prize at the Bruton Society of Artists open exhibition! Well done him.
One of the highlights of the year was our “Culture Bomb” trip to Paris in February. A small group of us had the most wonderful time exploring the streets and museums of this beautiful city.
Our minds boggled with the quantity and quality of the sculpture in the Louvre. What a treat to see all those fabulous antiquities in the flesh, rather than in books, room after room after room of them. I’m a sucker for the Romanesque period, and we saw some great examples, things I had studied and admired in books, and yet, seeing the hand of the maker on them really brings them alive.
The Rodin Museum was another highlight. His work is beautifully displayed around his former house and studio in a way that tells the story of his life, development and passions. You can see his ideas emerging for him to draw on them again and again, plus you get to see all the smaller and lesser-known works as well as the public art pieces displayed in the garden.
We also visited the Musee D’Orsay and the Branly Quai Ethnographical Museum which was an incredible experience, along with lots of churches, parks, cafes and restaurants.
The other thing that really captured us was the scaffolding on Notre Dame. There was lots of info all about the restoration and a viewing platform. The scale of it all was overwhelming. We enjoyed looking at the stone work and how they were sailing new stone up the river to be lifted on to a platform below the cathedral, ready to be moved to where it was needed. It reminded me of the Tower of Babel painting by Bruegel, which depicts the building techniques of the late Medieval period, and here they were centuries later, looking very similar in their methods.
Well, I can’t wait to see what the next year at the studio brings. There is always something new to celebrate!
Paris trip- I loved this Romanesque capital in the Louvre
Paris trip- I love the perfect sphere she’s holding-what skill!
Paris trip- always a sucker for a Green Man, very fancy one in the Louvre
Paris trip-some of us trying to look cool in this stylish city
Paris trip-Quai Branly Museum mask
Paris trip-a foot in the Louvre…lovely toe
Paris trip- the vast scaffold on Notre Dame
Paris trip- Rodin Museum
